129. Heinrich Kiepert

On July 31, Heinrich Kiepert celebrates his 80th birthday. He is a popular man of science in the best sense of the word. He used his excellent knowledge of antiquity and his art of cartography to create teaching aids that have served countless people in a way that cannot be sufficiently appreciated. His atlas works on ancient history and his wall maps on this branch of human knowledge have been of the greatest benefit to almost everyone who had to find their way around the history of antiquity. They have found their way into almost all grammar schools and secondary schools.

Today, Kiepert can be called the old master of cartography. He carefully used the results of his contemporary travelers and added to them those he obtained on his own journeys, which he carried out with the greatest effort and rare perseverance. In this way he produced cartographic achievements on the territories of Palestine and the landscapes of Asia Minor, which are of the greatest use in a wide variety of directions.

It is impossible here to list the map works that emerged from Kiepert's study.

Heinrich Kiepert is not only an outstanding scholar, but also an outstanding character. His love of freedom and his sense of independence make him appear as such, but did not make his life as such easy. Despite his outstanding achievements, he only became a full professor at Berlin University in 1874, at the age of 56, although he had been lecturing since 1853.

Kiepert played an important role at the Berlin Congress (1878). The various territorial cessions and redivisions of the Länder territories were to be arranged in such a way that the boundary lines corresponded to the natural geographical conditions. Kiepert was entrusted with the task of establishing these boundary lines properly. In this direction too, as in so many others, Kiepert proved to be one of those scholars who knew how to bring their erudition to bear on real life.